Foreseen (The Rothston Series)

by Smiles, Terri-Lynne

  I strode back into the waiting area, considering what to say first, when the Woman’s Day on the table caught my eye. Why was it interesting to that woman and kid? And why did Kinzie think it proved anything? I picked it up. The cover story touted no-fuss winter menus. Nothing special about it. I turned it around and placed it back on stack. I was almost back to my seat when I stopped in my tracks and looked back at the table. I’d done it too. The same action as the mother and son – exactly.

  “See?” Kinzie said to me hopefully.

  “Power of suggestion or something like that,” I argued, sitting back down, “I repeated their actions because I saw them do it.” Of course that was it. It couldn’t be anything else. And wasn’t that what I’d been thinking when I stopped? Looking to see why they’d done it? I knew that was right, but my confidence was shaken.

  “Mr. Langston? Is there a Mr. Langston here?” a short woman in teddy-bear patterned scrubs called as she walked into the waiting area.

  “That’s me,” I said rising from my chair. Kinzie got up as well, taking my hand as the woman beckoned us toward the examining room. On the way out, the teddy-bear clad woman stopped at the magazine table, picked up the Woman’s Day, held it in her hand for a second, then turned it around and placed in line with the others on the top of the pile. A shiver ran through my spine as my brain struggled to accept what I just saw. That couldn’t have happened. But it had. Kinzie squeezed my hand.

  I looked down and her eyes were now shining brightly. Holy hell. My girlfriend could manipulate quantum states? God, this was going to be hard to wrap my brain around. Even ‘Czarina’ didn’t fit this. More like Madame Curie. But even the Queen of Radioactivity couldn’t read minds.

  The short woman motioned us into a small room, and a moment later a youngish man in blue scrubs joined us.

  “I’m Dr. Bryce,” he said, matching the ID tag that dangled at his waist. “You’re here with …” He checked the computer pad in his hand. “… Alexander Murphy?” We both nodded. “The good news is he’s going to be fine,” Dr. Bryce said, and Kinzie’s shoulders dropped in relief. Now I understood her anxiety. She’d feel responsible if he hadn’t made it. But it wasn’t her fault. If what she’d said was true, Brolie sent Murphy to the hospital, not her.

  “You did the emergency tracheotomy?” the young doctor asked.

  I nodded. I’d rammed my pen knife into Murphy’s throat when I got to him. The amount of blood had shocked me, making me worry that it had been the wrong thing to do. Some girls had screamed and at least one guy had tried to pull me off of Murph. “How badly did I screw him up?”

  “It wasn’t beautiful surgery,” the doctor acknowledged. “He’ll have a pretty good scar, but you saved his life. Out near Newberry, with a billiard ball wedged in his throat, he would have never survived long enough for the paramedics to reach him.”

  “Could you explain that to Murph?” I asked the doctor. “He thought I was trying to kill him.”

  “Already have. He’s pretty grateful now. We’re going to keep him overnight to make sure we’ve got him patched up. He won’t be talking much for a while, but no permanent damage. Would you like to see him?”

  The visit was pure Murphy. He’d been given a toy drawing board with the plastic film you lift to erase. But Murphy kept messing up, handing it to us to write, like we couldn’t talk either. After a half hour, a nurse chased us out so Murphy could get some sleep.

  It was two-thirty in the morning by the time I pulled the Maserati onto the back road up to campus. We’d both been quiet on the drive back. My brain wasn’t adjusting to the idea that the world I’d woken up to this morning didn’t exist. Part of me wanted everything she’d said to be true, and that part was jealous. Every physicist knows you can’t ‘see’ the quantum foam. You ‘see’ things when light bounces off them and hits your retina. But details of quantum events are far, far smaller than the wavelength of light. The concept of ‘seeing’ doesn’t make any sense. But Kinzie was seeing things I would never see. Could never see. Living my dream. What did it look like? How exactly could she change it?

  But I had other questions as well. The most troubling ones involved Brolie. I trusted Kinzie, and the idea of her altering people’s decisions gave me pause. But Brolie having that same power was a problem – and he’d proven that tonight. I didn’t think I could hate the guy more, but now I did. And trusted him even less. He was dangerous. But that assumed everything Kinzie had said was real. I still couldn’t get there. But why would she be doing this?

  Kinzie was silent as well, maybe exhausted with the relief that Murphy was okay. “Want me to take you to your dorm?” I asked, remembering that we still had her luggage in the car.

  “I think Sasha might kill me if I drag everything in at this hour,” she said. “And I think maybe we should talk. You still don’t believe me.”

  I took the turnoff for frat row. “Yeah. I don’t,” I admitted. “That thing with the magazine, it still could have been a coincidence. And that’s a lot more plausible than what you’ve said.”

  She accepted my doubt. “I guess that’s why it so easy for us to stay hidden,” she said half to herself. “Commons don’t want to believe it.”

  “Commons?”

  “Non-adepts. People who can’t perceive the turbula.”

  As she explained, something triggered in my brain. Brolie. What was it he called me tonight? A common fuckwad? Yeah. Weird phrase. But … still had to be a coincidence, didn’t it? I pulled into the Alpha Delt parking lot and shut off the car.

  “So tell me how you did that thing at the hospital,” I asked, grabbing her bags and headed for the back door. I was searching for some proof that what she was saying was fake – or that it was real.

  “Technically, we can’t make someone do something they aren’t considering, but it isn’t quite that simple. With the magazine, each of you thought about stopping at the magazine table, so I influenced you to do it. Once you had stopped, the Woman’s Day magazine was on top, so each of you was inclined to pick it up – to move it out of the way if nothing else. So that one was easy. Once it was in your hands, then you had choices of what to do with it. I influenced you to turn it. Then influenced you to put it back on top of the pile. When you string that all together, it kind of looks like I made you do something you hadn’t thought of, but I really hadn’t. Just a chain of events.”

  “There isn’t a lot of difference between the two,” I said unlocking the door to my room, then following her in.

  “I suppose there really isn’t.” She turned to face me once I closed the door. “I can show you something that will make you believe me,” she stated, then paused. “If you want me to.”

  “Is there some reason I wouldn’t?” She still looked hesitant. “If you can prove this, bring it on,” I prompted.

  Her brow furrowed. “I will, but I don’t want to mess up your life.”

  “I don’t see how anything could.”

  She directed me to sit down on my bed while she cleared the teak table of the remnants from my exam studying last semester. “Do you know where your hoodie is?” she asked when she finished.

  “The orange one? You never gave it back.”

  She got a strange, empty look in her eyes for a moment before saying, “Well, now I have.” She motioned toward the table top and there is was. The orange sweatshirt. Perfectly folded, lying on what had just been a bare table. I just stared, trying to let my mind absorb what had happened.

  “You transported it,” I said numbly.

  “We call it translocation.”

  “How –” my mind raced. “How do you do it? What does it look like?” My brain went into hyperdrive, and I spouted quantum theory for a full two minutes before she stopped me and explained what she had done. It still didn’t make any sense but I’d seen the result with my own eyes.

  She flopped onto the bed beside me with a yawn. I pulled her into my arms, more out of uncertainty of what to say or think. “Nobody kno
ws I can do it.”

  I scrunched my face. “You’re a frigging transporter and no one knows?” Then she explained why. Brolie. The guy just kept getting to be more of an asshole, although the fact that he was bullying some wuss at this Rothston-place didn’t surprise me at all. “You need to stay away from him,” I told her, not for the first time.

  “He and Dr. Collier are responsible for continuing my training now that I’m back at school,” she said. “So I don’t have a choice.” She snuggled against me, with her head resting on my chest. “I’ll just have to be more careful.”

  “Just don’t let him push you around.”

  “Can you see me doing that?” she asked, raising her head to look at me. “Rex bugs me too much. His conceited, stick-up-the-butt attitude drives me nuts. I want to wipe the smug look off his face,” she said with a yawn, as her head fell back to my chest.

  Soon her breathing deepened, and I kissed her hair, hoping I would fall asleep soon too, although it didn’t seem likely with my head spinning with the idea of adepts and Brolie and this secret organization, sneaking around to change the minds of world leaders. I wanted to sleep, so that tomorrow I could wake to discover that all of this was a dream. I hoped it was a dream, because one thing was clear to me: Rex Brolie – or anyone for that matter – with that kind of power could only end in a nightmare.

  Chapter 18

  Kinzie

  What had I done? I stared at the words in the book in front of me, going over and over the same ground in my head. It seemed right at the time – tell Greg everything, then he would understand what had happened to Murphy at Brewer’s. He’d know everything I’d been hiding from him. He’d know what I could do, and help me understand it. Help me deal with Rex. I had to tell him. He was part of my life and needed to know. But just like every time I was with him, I’d forgotten that our relationship was just pretend. That I was playing out my juvenile fantasies using him as the unwitting handsome prince. I’d forgotten that he didn’t actually love me. And I’d forgotten how the evening had started.

  My dad had pushed me over the edge, ranting about hiding a boyfriend from him, and statistics of deaths from young male drivers, and every other threat to my existence that he could dream up. I’d focused on reading and influencing him, trying to get him to stop, and it had diverted my attention from Greg. Because of that, I knew the truth. The effect of my unintentional influencing must have faded while I was distracted, and moments after I got off the phone, Greg told his frat brothers that I wasn’t his girlfriend – that we didn’t belong together. That was the true Greg – not the one who stood in the hallway two minutes later declaring his love for me. That kind of stuff only happened in silly movies, and wasn’t something Greg Langston would ever do on his own.

  Still, it nagged at me. Why couldn’t I tell that I was influencing him? When I’d translocated the presents on Christmas Day, I’d been thinking about having them on the bed. But the pronouncement in the hallway of the frat house had taken me by surprise. So maybe I wasn’t influencing him. Maybe this was real. But I had no way to be sure.

  I stared down again at the open page of the economics text lying on my desk. It was a chapter on elasticity, and I hadn’t absorbed a word I’d read. Sasha shifted on her bed, holding a Dickens’ novel she was reading for her English class in front of her, but she seemed as distracted as I was. I flipped my book closed, sighing as I got up to pace around the room for a break. My head hurt from thinking too much, and not about my class work.

  Sasha’s head lifted to watch me. “I don’t know why you’d break up with him,” she said, putting down her own book.

  “I didn’t say I was going to,” I answered tersely. “And stop reading me.”

  “Reflex,” she responded unapologetically. “And you’re thinking about it.”

  “Maybe.” I stopped to stretch. Moving around was helping with the headache at least. It was fading quickly.

  Sasha sat up on her bed. “Look, if you want my opinion …”

  “Which I don’t,” I interrupted, trying to head her off. I wasn’t comfortable talking to Sasha about Greg. Partly because I knew what their relationship had been like, and partly because they hated each other now. Well, “hate” might be too strong a word, but there was no love there. Never had been. Nothing she said could be helpful. Still, she insisted on chiming in.

  “If you want my advice,” she said starting over, “you’d stop worrying about whether or not you influenced him somehow. It just doesn’t matter.”

  “It does to me, Sash,” I said, but then hesitated, as the headache roared back. Maybe she was right and I was making this too hard. Why shouldn’t I just relax and have fun with it? I opened my mouth to agree, when I caught her vacant stare. “Stop influencing me!” I blurted out.

  Her expression changed instantly, and she grinned. “Just trying to help.”

  “That isn’t help. It’s …” My eyes shot open in shock. The headache had vanished again! “Read me again,” I ordered.

  Sasha scrunched up her face in confusion. “Uh, okay,” she agreed as I turned away, facing out the window, so I wouldn’t see if her eyes glazed over. A moment later, a vague twinge started behind my eyes, radiating out to my forehead and temples.

  “You’re reading me, right?”

  “Yeah,” she answered cautiously. “Why?”

  “Let me keep testing. Try to influence me,” I requested.

  “To do what?” my roommate asked behind me, sounding even more confused.

  “I don’t know. Anything,” I answered, wondering if she was going to do it, or whether I should just tell her my theory now. Probably the latter, I thought, as my headache grew much more intense. That was it! “Stop now,” I asked, almost wincing from the pain. It quickly subsided.

  I turned around to face her, almost laughing at the obvious solution to the puzzle that had plagued me since the beginning of the school year. “You were influencing me, right? And it was to tell you what I was doing.”

  “You asked me to do it,” she confirmed a bit defensively.

  I laughed again and talked through the pieces. It all fit! The headaches started when I arrived at Hutchins College. And I’d been spending my time with Sasha and Rex then. And at Rothston. The constant thudding stabs in the arcade weren’t from the electronic music. It was from the other players reading and influencing me!

  “Sasha! My head hurts when I’m being read!” I concluded happily.

  She rose from her bed. Her eyes were as wide as saucers, but she looked almost afraid to come near me. “You what?” she gasped. “No one knows when that’s happening.”

  “But I do, and I just proved it.”

  “Whoa. This is big, Kinzie,” she said with awe.

  I laughed out loud with glee, grabbed her hands and skipped around in a circle. The mystery of the headaches was solved. I hadn’t realized until this moment how much the mysterious ailment had been weighing on me. But there was nothing wrong.

  I giggled again and dropped her hands. “Greg’s been convinced I’m dying of some horrible disease. He’ll be so relieved that …”

  “Greg?” Sasha interrupted, as her eyes went wide again. “You can’t tell him about us, Kinzie. Nothing!” she whispered urgently, as if someone might overhear us in our own room. She eyed me suspiciously for a moment. “You haven’t said anything, have you?”

  “Of course I … “ My cheeks started to flush with guilt as I stopped the words from leaving my mouth. “Um …” I started again, and realized there was no pain in my head. She wouldn’t know if I decided to lie. I gave a carefree laugh. “Of course not, Sasha,” I said as my eyes glazed over, influencing her suspicions away. “I’m not that stupid.”

  Chapter 19

  Greg

  I set the steaming hot chocolate down on my usual table in the Pit, ready to take my position for my scheduled torture. Five weeks of this was making me testy. I turned to give Kinzie a kiss before she met with the asshole who was eyeing us
from the other side of the room, but I caught Rex Brolie’s blank stare. Probably trying to influence the girl at the next table to sleep with him. I’m sure that’s the only way he got laid. That and bragging about his White House internship after graduation. Some girls were into that sort of prestige, and I’d heard Brolie playing it up, acting like the position was barely good enough for him. I’d wanted to smash his face in. This guy – with what he could do – working in the White House? Time to move to another planet.

  Kinzie’s eyes flicked toward me. “Pick up your cup. Now,” she commanded.

  I obeyed without thinking, but started to ask why, when some doofus leaving the snack bar’s line tripped over his flapping shoe strings. He lunged forward to keep the burger and towering mass of fries from escaping his tray and hit our table, jolting it a couple inches. He saved his fries, but the hot chocolate would have gone flying had it still been there.

  “That’s why,” Kinzie said smugly, once the guy had moved on.

  “Do you have to do that?” I snapped.

  “I have to practice. And you should thank me. I just saved your cocoa.” She leaned in for a kiss, and I gave her one, even if I wasn’t feeling it quite the way I had a moment ago. “Okay,” she said with a sigh. “Got to go to work.”

  I watched her cross the room. Neither of us liked her working with Brolie. She was tired of his arrogant bullshit. But apparently he carried a lot of weight at this Rothston place. I’d had crappy teachers before so I understood how that could be, but it still didn’t make me like it any better. And lately, Kinzie had seemed to be hating it less. She was getting better with her skills and beginning to talk like she was going to make some major difference in the world and did crap like she’d just done with my hot chocolate just to prove how great she was. And her exercises were getting more intrusive. She’d started out messing with people’s lives in tiny ways, making someone knock over a cup, or skip across the quad, or say something silly. But her interference was growing. Two days ago, she’d influenced one of Brolie’s frat brothers to skip an exam and listen to his iPod instead. Sure, the guy was already failing the class, but the idea of where this could go bothered me. All the science fiction I’d read and watched growing up had taught me that power like this only goes one place. I tried to convince myself that those were only stories, but my dad’s confident grin flashed through my head. He’d changed when people began acting like he had power. But Kinzie wasn’t like that. She was better than that, wasn’t she? I’d been sure of it before; but now, it seemed like merely a hope.